


Infections Of A Different Kind

by callmesigyn



Series: Firebird [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: At least we have fanfic, Aurora - Freeform, D&D did us kind of dirty, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Game of Thrones Spoilers, Gratuitous Smut, Inspired by Game of Thrones, Inspired by Music, Past Abuse, Past Character Death, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Relationship(s), Past Torture, Ramsay is His Own Warning, Reunions, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Season/Series 08, Swearing, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, duh it's Sandor, sansan, that little shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 13:21:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18757258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmesigyn/pseuds/callmesigyn
Summary: Sansa finally reunites with a ghost from her past – shame that it had to be on their last night on earth.Set during 8x02 and 8x04.





	1. Sansa's POV

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this before episode 4 came out and when it did I was like HOLY SHIT YAS IT CAME TRUE, but now I'm sad because they didn't get to do the deed so there'll be a second chapter because I WANNA SEE MY SANSAN, D&D!!!

White snow fell on the weirwood tree, concealing the scarlet colouring of its leaves which rustled with the wintry winds brushing through them – loudly – in the unwavering night. Sansa took a deep breath, the cold finding a home in her, but the wolf could only feel warmth. The kind of warmth you only feel at home. She was finally _home_.

Looking at the forbidding face of the heart tree of her childhood, she was surprised to find herself sending a silent prayer to all of those who helped her get where she stood, and for those who tried. To any gods willing to listen – the Seven of her mother or the old ones of her father – Sansa prayed for their souls. Her parents’, Robb’s, even Petyr had helped her in his own way. Sansa prayed for Jon, Bran and Arya – who she only recently met again and was not ready to say goodbye yet. She prayed for Theon and Brienne, the ones that helped her escape from a monster, along with an old lady whose name was unknown and face long forgotten. She prayed for the Hound. A meek sigh escaped her lips. The uncertainty of their fate had already urged her to thank both Theon and Brienne earlier. Now, only a few hours before the dawn, Sansa found herself regretting not thanking _him_. The Hound... Or at least, he once was.

  
Sansa remembered the night of the Blackwater, when he had frightened her in the modest rooms she had been given in King’s Landing. The scars on his face were angry, an ugly sort of grieving – terrifying to a girl like her that didn’t understand how pain could turn into contempt, more so than the knife held to her throat. But she was that girl no longer.

  
She had seen him arrive with Jon and the Queen’s entourage the day before, of course she had. They stared at each other, both sets of lips opened in quiet affirmation of something still foreign to her. The same way he used to look at her when he thought she wasn’t paying attention to what was happening around her when in the capital.

  
A call from a man with an eye patch in the courtyard of Winterfell had broken their staring, however, and they went their separate ways. They had never met again after that. Sansa admitted she tried to avoid him. He was never present in meetings or feasts in the Great Hall, so it had been a relatively easy affair. The times she felt eyes on her though, making her shudder unconsciously, she just knew who it was.

  
Even after all those years, after meeting bigger monsters, she was still afraid of him. Not of his face, not of his brutish hands or words, but of his rage. However, in the brief moment their eyes had met, she could see that his rage had been tamed somehow. Sansa was reminded of a long whispered prayer. _Save him if you can, and gentle the rage inside him_. His scars seemed less, in a way. Maybe he was more accepting of them now – Sansa couldn’t know, didn’t know him anymore. In the false solace of the Vale, the wolf had imagined the dog many times – so many different versions of him that a part of her couldn’t help but think she did know this new him. But she didn’t. Anxiety sunk its claws in her in every way she considered facing him again. Despite all the years passed, Sansa still felt like a little bird sometimes, still trapped in a gilded cage.

  
The sound of leaves crunching on the ground behind her made her turn around swiftly, fear clutched to her heart in habit, only to meet the same grey eyes she remembered as a child.

  
“Sandor”, she whispered so softly he may have not heard her. Reminding herself that she was in fact not a little bird anymore, but a wolf, Sansa stood taller. “I don’t remember you as the type to pray”, she tried again in a steady voice.

  
Uninvited, he came closer but barely spared her a glance. His gaze was sitting on the weirwood’s bloody eyes.

  
“Seen a lot these days”.

  
She let out a breath she didn’t realise she had been holding at hearing his gruff voice. Processing his words, she gave him a little smile and turned to the tree again, right at his unscarred side, but not before thinking he might have been comely, handsome even, without the scars. They didn’t bother her now but... How different would Sandor’s life have been if his brother hadn’t shoved his face in the flames? Hadn’t betrayed his trust in such a horrid way?

  
“I can identify with that”.

  
“What? Little Bird doesn’t pray anymore?”

  
_There it was... Little Bird_. A sole memory of her time in King’s Landing. The nickname brought a blush to her cheeks. Thinking of the words themselves, Sansa noticed they could’ve been something hissed by the Hound, the Lannister Dog, but his tone wasn’t mean or sarcastic. In reality, he sounded simply curious, if not almost gentle.

  
“To be honest I surprised myself. I never thought I would pray again after...” Her voice trembled. _“Everything”_.

  
Her knees shook after glancing at him only to find him turned to her. Dark grey eyes met icy blue ones. After a second or two, Sansa was the first to break away. A soft muttered _“Aye”_ was the only sound of acknowledgment she received.

  
“Thank you”, she said after a beat of silence.

  
“What’re you thanking me for?” He asked not too rudely.

  
She judged his tone quietly – staring at him in peripheral.

  
“For protecting Arya”, she began. “For trying to protect me”.

  
“Don’t”, he sounded pained. “Wolf Bitch left me for dead and I left you in the lion’s mouth”.

  
The night Sandor left King’s Landing, Sansa wrapped herself in his muddy cloak and thought the lion’s den would cease to be and the stag would see her returned to her mother and brother. Oh how foolish she had been then.

  
Her thoughts drifted to Sandor’s cloak. He gave it to her the day Joffrey had her beaten in the throne room after a gnarly defeat of her brother’s design.

  
“Enough”, he had said – stood up to the bastard king for her. Guarded her, mentored her, saved her. Her only friend in the capital, if not in the South as a whole.

  
She had kept the cloak after that. Just like his handkerchief that day in the battlements, he never asked for it back. So she kept it, at the bottom of the chest that held her summer silks – it was her innocent little secret. Every time she was sad, like when news of the Red wedding reached her, she would weep – always wrapped up in his cloak as a shield. That chest was long gone, along with a given Kingsguard cloak, forgotten in a small room on the city run by the people who ruined her family.

  
“I should have gone with you. The night the Blackwater burned”.

  
Sandor let out a laugh. A deep sound reeking of self loathing. “Maybe you were better off in King’s Landing”.

  
Despite his words, Sansa could tell he regretted her decision that night. How could he not?

  
“Maybe”, she replied honestly. “What’s done it’s done, Ser”. Just a conversation with him brought out the rehearsed pleasantries of court buried deep within her.

He growled like she expected the old him to. “I’m no Knight”.

“You were mine”.

The look of awe in his eyes reminded Sansa of Jon’s when they were reunited, only Sandor’s had a heat in them, a longing Jon’s gaze did not possess.

Deciding now was probably the right time to say goodbye to her siblings before the dead arrived, Sansa turned to leave, walking a few feet across the glistening snow.

  
“Sansa”, her name on his lips stopped her in her tracks. He had never called her by name before. It was too intimate, too uncertain. “How could we ever work?” His voice was that of a man defeated, as if he thought about it before. She recognised it because it was the same was hers.

  
“I don’t know”, she answered. She’d fantasised him many times when she was in the Vale, imagined them. But she had always imagined them in a world different from their own. A world with no lions, no flayed men, no mocking birds or spiders.

  
Sansa had a duty to her family and the memory of her parents, a duty to further her House as the eldest legitimate Stark. The Lady of Winterfell – at war with the South – couldn’t be associated in that way with the second son of a minor southern House allied with her enemies. They could only live inside the childish dreams of a stupid little girl, with a head full of songs.

  
“We can’t change the past”, they both held their breath in understanding. “We could try to change the future but...”

  
He had those pleading eyes staring at her again. Filled with something akin to resignation, but she could see the small spark of hope hiding beneath the waves. They would most likely all die tomorrow and Sansa couldn’t bear to put out that spark just as hers had been long ago, some even by him. Still, she knew by now what fared to men with nothing to fight for.

  
“A shame it’s our last night on earth”.


	2. Sandor's POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Both Sansa and Sandor survived the battle. What now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> smut smUT S M U T
> 
> Help us George, you're our only hope.

Sandor groaned and simply continued eating as they all cheered for the Wolf Bitch for a second time that night. The large hearth behind the main table and a few candles scattered through the room the only source of heat in the forsaken place. He hated the fucking North with its cold and its dead people and its damned gingers.

  
When he had seen her again for the first time after so many years it was like something inside him burst. He had not said her name out loud in an eternity, yet there hadn’t been a day in which Sandor hadn't thought of his Little Bird. In empty fields or roaring crowds, his mind often wandered to the fire of her hair, the fire he was supposed to fear, and yet he didn’t. The fire of her hair was put out by the sadness of her blue eyes like slowly melting ice. Still, even then Sandor could see the tiny ember in her irises. Now, the ember had blown, giving way to a full-fledged inferno. The Lady of Winterfell was an Ice Queen made of fire, as dual as it seemed. As beautiful as she was now, Sandor couldn’t help but mourn the little bird whose wings had been clipped, but she soared above them anyway.

  
He turned his head slightly to the main table to catch a glimpse of her. Sansa _fucking_ Stark. Sandor had been tormented after their last encounter in the weirwood tree. She had given him hope – stupid hope – before the battle. Now the battle is fought and won, and she won’t even look at him. Sandor knew it couldn’t have been something he did. He was sure there was no way the Little Bird could have known why he had been in the Godswood in the first place. Sandor had let her think he was there to pray, but – honestly – he had gone there just to take a piss.

  
Taking a large gulp of his drink, he remembered the end of the battle itself. Blood and sweat mixed on his body, the salt burning at his wounds. When the familiar war sounds had been silenced, the already scarred man had been left with a large scratch mark on his shoulder given to him by some dead cunt, and a few bruises here and there. The pile of corpses formed mountains made of fire and blood. They had lost so many in the spawn of just a little over five hours, if the light slowly creeping in the horizon was any indication. It had felt less cold, somehow, relief rising like the warming sun. He was alive, Sansa was alive. They had managed to beat the Stranger himself.

  
Wiping the wine that had smeared on his beard, he felt eyes on him – beckoning him away from his thoughts. However, it was the wrong redhead taking a seat beside him.

  
“She left me”, Tormund said. “She fucking left me”.

 

He never considered Beric a friend up until the moment he had sacrificed himself. Now, he wonders if the revived fucker had been his only friend.

  
Feeling a hand on his shoulder, Sandor sighed. “Don’t touch me”.

  
Finally, some random woman saved his night. "You can touch me", she said, leading Tormund away from his table. Her friend stayed, trying to convince Sandor to join her, but he refused – choosing to drink his ass off instead.

  
The woman persisted, thinking she could seduce him, but a growl from the Hound lead to her fleeing in horror.

  
“Is that _all_ you do? Scare off little girls?” His Little Bird’s voice seduced him. Her words held an amused edge, as if she were actually japing with him. Her first words to him after the previous night a banter between friends, and not a haughty jab at a dog.

  
He didn’t answer nonetheless.

  
“She could’ve made you happy”, she tried again. “... For a little while”.

  
“There’s only one thing that would make me happy”.

  
She frowned, curious. “And what’s that?”

  
Resisting the urge to look at her, Sandor snapped. “That’s my fucking business”.

  
Shame filled him when he looked at her then. Her eyes cold, silently judging him as he knows they did the night before. Different from the night before, however, was the fact that she gazed directly into his eyes. No turning away, no facing his unscarred side, but staring right at his eyes as if he were a normal man.

  
“There was a time you couldn’t look at me”.

  
He noticed the raise of a delicate brow, the amused twitch of her lips. “That was a long time ago. I’ve seen much worse than you since then”.

There were only a handful of times in which sorrow has never gripped him so tightly, and this was one of them. To know what she had suffered, what he had let her go through... Sandor felt as if he should have just thrown her over his shoulder that night of the Blackwater and to Seven Hells with it!

_“I should have gone with you. The night the Blackwater burned”._

Her words last night had said it all. Nothing would have happened if Sansa had left King’s Landing with him, none of it. But she didn’t need to be reminded of what could’ve had been. Her words already told him she thought about it afterwards. Gods know he’d imagined what could have happened or not happened enough for the both of them.

“I heard you were broken in. I heard you were broken in _rough_ ”.

Sandor admitted saying it to test her, see whether or not she was truly a wolf now. She barely flinched at the words.

“He got what he deserved”, her voice was harder now. He could always recognise a voice filled with hate. “I gave it to him”.

The satisfactory grin on her face then faithfully reminded Sandor of neither a wolf nor a little bird, but of a red-pelted fox who just caught her prey.

“How?”

The grin only widened. _“Hounds”_.

Sandor laughed, relishing in the irony of it all. Even from afar, he had tried to protect her.

“You’ve changed, Little Bird”, he cursed himself for the doleful expression that passed her eyes.

“I thought about it a lot, you know?” He grunted in question while taking a sip of his wine. “Without Joffrey or Cersei, without Littlefinger or Ramsay or the rest, I would’ve stayed a Little Bird all my life... For better or for worst”.

“You should never thank them for who you’ve become, Sansa”, he called her by name like he did in the Godswood. The soft smile she gave him for it made him want to call her Sansa for the rest of his life. “Pain brought out what you already had it in you”.

“How do you know I had in me?” She asked, tilting her head. Gracefully, as she always did everything.

He stared at her eyes. Surely she could see the gentleness in him now. “I know because I’ve seen it. That day in the battlements, you would’ve killed Joffrey if I hadn’t stopped you”.

She rolled her eyes and sighed. “And killed myself along with it”.

“Sacrificed yourself”, Sandor corrected her. “I’ve been around soldiers and so-called Knights and honourable men my entire life to know that that takes strength”.

A chuckle escaped her lips and he couldn’t help but think her the most bewitching woman he had ever met.

“How did you become so wise?” She asked.

Laughing, he replied: “Death”.

She chuckled once more before looking around the Hall and getting up from her seat. He felt disappointment sweep through him before her eyes turned to him again, inviting, and her hand outstretched towards him. He hesitated and she clutched his hand, not ungentle, pulling him out of the Great Hall with her and straight to a large room he assumed to have belonged to the Lords of Winterfell and their wives.

“Sansa, why-“ He was interrupted by the Little Bird’s lips on his. Shocked, he did not respond at first. A soft moan coming from her awakened something deep in him. A surge of need went directly to his cock as he grabbed at Sansa’s waist with one hand and tangled her hair with the other, kissing her with the thirst of a dying man.

Breaking away from his lips, Sansa breathed in the hole where his ear was supposed to be. “Call me Sansa again”, she asked as she opened his tunic, struggling with it for a while.

Moving away to remove his shirt, he let her kiss all the bloody red scars she could reach, placing her hand on the recent scratch mark on his shoulder.

“Sansa”, he complied, moving to sit on the armchair near the fireplace. She took his lead and sat right on his lap, grinding down on his erection. “Seven Hells!” His nostrils flared as he held her hips. Sandor didn’t know how or why his Little Bird was throwing this mean old dog a bone, but damn him if he wasn’t strong enough to refuse it.

He moved the hands on her hips to the back of her dress and she quailed for just a brief second, but it was enough for Sandor. He made a move to remove his hands, but Sansa grabbed them and instead placed them on her breasts.

 _“You won’t hurt me”_ , it wasn’t a question but a fact. Same words to tumble out of her fuckable lips long ago.

Sandor’s hands were taken out of her breasts for Sansa to remove the dress herself, probably trying to regain some control after all that she’d been through. Meanwhile, his hands were busy opening his breeches and pulling out his manhood. He would have tried to gauge at her reaction to him if he wasn’t so entranced by the sight of Sansa’s pink nipples and the pale scars on her alabaster body, silent in their misery.

“Sansa”, he sighed once more as she wrapped her small hand around his cock and slowly lowered herself on him.

“Sandor”, she moaned.

He let her ride him for a while, letting her explore all the things she liked and disliked on her own. He was a mere slave to her pleasure, simply hearing the sounds she made were pleasure enough for him.

Sansa stopped abruptly and came silently. Her mouth open and her eyes closed, Sandor grabbed her hips urgently and kissed her, his tongue exploring her mouth, as he pounded into her until he spilled his seed inside her. They panted on each other’s shoulder for a while before kissing again, softly and briefly like they had never done before.

“What made you want to leave the feast?” He asked suddenly.

She caressed his burnt cheek, feeling the marred skin under her hand and fingers. Realising it truly didn’t bother her anymore, Sandor held her hand to his lips and kissed her palm.

“The Queen”, Sansa answered. “I think her dragons may have started to piss on the weirwood tree”.

His lips were frozen in place.

_Shit._

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by AURORA's "Infections Of A Different Kind"


End file.
